She has also attracted somewhat of a polarized reaction, accused of apeing literary giants like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Atwood- the latter in particular for her deeply dystopian, futuristic and feminist-oriented characters. Since writing her first novel, Mudbound ( which won the Bellwether Prize, an award given biennially to the best unpublished debut novel) Jordan has been inundated with literary awards for her fresh and compelling narrative voice. The bravery of her efforts have paid off as her first two novels have been recognised as something special in the world of literary fiction. Her first two novels have taken the hot-button issues of racism, abortion, sexual violence and state control and placed them at the very centre of her stories. Hillary Jordan is not afraid to shock her readers- a brave position to take up in an unseasoned author still finding her literary feet. Now, they were the colour of newly shed blood.” For the twenty –six years she’d been alive, her hands had been a honey-toned pink, deepening to golden brown in the summertime. For a few seconds, shadowed by her eyelashes and backlit by the hard white light emanating from the ceiling, they appeared black She’d seen Reds many times before, of course, on the street and on the vid- but still, she wasn’t prepared for the sight of her own changed flesh. She held them in front of her eyes, squinting up at them. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan